


Hitchhiker's Guide to the Archives

by blockyaloe



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Other, Trans Martin Blackwood, and jon is ford, jon doesn't know how to communicate but hes literally an alien in this one so it's okay, martin is arthur, sasha is zaphod, tim is trillian, you dont need to know about hitchhikers guide to the galaxy to read this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:09:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24970591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blockyaloe/pseuds/blockyaloe
Summary: One Tuesday morning, Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. for Martin Blackwood, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems to already be more than he can cope with. However, the galaxy is a very strange and startling place.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	1. Chapter 1

The house stood on a flat stretch of ground just beyond the edge of the village. It stood, surrounded by trees and plants, and looked over a broad stretch of North Country farmland. Not a remarkable house by any means - it was nearing twenty-five years old, squattish, squarish, made of brick, and had exactly four windows on the front positioned more-or-less in a fairly eye-pleasing fashion.  
The only person to which this house was special was one Martin Blackwood, and that was only because he happened to be the one who owned (and, furthermore, lived in) it. He had lived in it for about five years, ever since he moved out of Chelsea after his mother had passed. He was nearing twenty-five as well, red-haired and never quite at ease with himself. Back when he had lived in Chelsea, where his unease had been endlessly provoked, the thing that often made worry most had been when he had been asked what he was so worried about. He worked at the local library which he always used to tell his friends was a lot more interesting than they probably thought- and a lot more interesting than it probably was.  
It hadn't properly registered with Martin that the counsel wanted to knock down his house and build a bypass instead.  
At seven o’clock on Tuesday morning Martin didn’t feel very good. He woke up blearily, got up blearily, wandered around his room blearily, opened a window, squinted at a yellow blob that may have been a bulldozer, found his slippers, slid on his glasses, and moped off to the bathroom to wash.  
Toothpaste on the brush - so. Scrub.  
Binder on the floor - so. Shove it on.  
Shaving mirror - pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it. For a moment it reflected the second bulldozer through the bathroom window. Properly adjusted, it reflected Martin Blackwood’s stubble. He shaved them off, moisturized, deodorized, and ambled off back to his room to find something pleasant to put on.  
Boxers, shirt, joggers, sweater, phone in pocket, knockoff airpods in ears. Yawn.  
The word bulldozer wandered through his mind for a moment in search for something to connect with  
The bulldozer outside his bedroom window was quite a big one.  
_Yellow,_ he thought, and ambled his way out to his kitchen in order to find something decent-tasting to hove into his mouth.  
On his way to dig through his well-stocked fridge, he stopped to drink a large glass of water. And then another. And the suspicion that he may be hungover dawned on him. Why was he hung over? Had he been drinking the night before? He supposed that he must have been. He caught a glint in the reflection on the kitchen tap. _Yellow,_ he thought.  
He stood there for a moment and thought. The bar, he thought. Oh dear, the bar. He vaguely remembered being upset, upset about something that seemed important. He had been telling people about it- telling people about it at great length, he suspected; his greatest visual recollection was the glazed look of the bartender and the disinterested nods of anyone who had found themselves sitting adjacent to him. Something about a new bypass he had just found out about. It had been in the pipeline for months yet nobody had seemed to know a single damn thing about it. Ridiculous. He poured some frozen fruit into a blender and followed it up with some from-frozen fruit punch. _It will sort itself out,_ he decided as he hit the blend button until the things in the blender were sufficiently blended and relatively drinkable. _No one wanted a bypass, the council didn’t have a leg to stand on._ It would sort itself out.  
God what a horrible hangover it had earned him, though. He poured his relatively-drinkable smoothie into an old novelty Halloween cup, poking a relatively-clean metal straw into it. _Yellow,_ he thought. The word yellow searched through his mind for something to connect with.  
Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and sitting in front of a big metal bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.


	2. Chapter 2

Mr. A. Nolan was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was about forty, tall and broad and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, outside of his time at work he was the leader of a cult, which had at one point been a congregation to some fire goddess that nobody knew the name of anymore, but has since devolved into more of an arson fanclub.  
Unfortunately for him, arson wasn't a means by which he was legally allowed to demolish a house. This made him particularly upset, because it wasn't very often he got a chance to demolish a house, and he couldn't even have fun doing it.  
"Come off it, Mr. Blackwood,", he said, "you can't win you know. You can't sit in front of the bulldozer indefinitely."  
Martin sat in the mud and squelched at him.  
"I'm game," he said, "we'll see who rusts first."  
"I'm afraid you're going to have to accept it," said Mr. Nolan, clutching at the (currently useless) lighter that always found itself in his left-hand pocket, "this bypass has got to be built and it's going to be built "  
"First I've heard of it," said Martin, "why's it going to be built?"  
Mr. Nolan shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it away again.  
"What do you mean, ‘why's it got to be built?’" he said. "It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses."  
Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people of point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people of point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.  
Mr. Nolan wanted to be at point D. Point D wasn't anywhere in particular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point D, with axes over the door, and spend a pleasant amount of time at point E, which would be the nearest pub to point D.  
He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally uncomfortable on each. Obviously somebody had been appallingly incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn't him. Mr. Nolan said: "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know."  
"Appropriate time?" exclaimed Martin. "Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no he'd come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me."  
"But Mr. Blackwood, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."  
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything."  
"But the plans were on display-"  
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."  
"That's the display de-"  
"With a torch."  
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."  
"So had the stairs."  
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"  
"Yes," said Martin, "Yes, I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘ _beware the ceaseless watcher_ ’"  
A cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Martin Blackwood as he sat criss-cross in the cold mud. It cast a shadow over Martin Blackwood’s house. Mr. Nolan frowned at it.  
"It's not as if it's a particularly nice house," he said.  
"I'm sorry, but I happen to like it."  
"You'll like the bypass."  
"Oh shut up," said Martin. "Shut up and go away, and take your bloody bypass with you. You haven't got a leg to stand on and you know it."  
Mr. Nolan’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his mind was for a moment filled with terribly attractive visions of Martin Blackwood’s house being consumed with fire and Martin himself running screaming from the blazing ruin.  
“Mr. Blackwood," he said.  
"Hello? Yes?" said Martin.  
"Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?"  
"How much?" asked Martin.  
"None at all," said Mr. Nolan, and stormed off with his mind still filled with wonderful visions of that damned house going up in flames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh wowza. this has gotten a lot more hits than i expected it to.  
> so i made a discord server ^-^  
> https://discord.gg/kRwG5kW


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